The present invention relates to surgical systems. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to ophthalmic surgical systems. Even more particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to interfaces for use with ophthalmic surgical systems.
The human eye can suffer a number of maladies causing mild deterioration to complete loss of vision. While contact lenses and eyeglasses can compensate for some ailments, ophthalmic surgery is required for others. Generally, ophthalmic surgery is classified into posterior segment procedures, such as vitreoretinal surgery, and anterior segment procedures, such as cataract surgery. More recently, combined anterior and posterior segment procedures have been developed.
The surgical instrumentation used for ophthalmic surgery can be specialized for anterior segment procedures or posterior segment procedures or support both. Such surgical instrumentation can comprise a Vitreoretinal and Cataract microsurgical console. Such a surgical console can provide a variety of functions depending on the surgical procedure and surgical instrumentation. For example, surgical consoles can expedite cataract surgeries (e.g. phacoemulsification procedures) by helping manage irrigation and aspiration flows into and out of a surgical site. And of course surgical consoles can provide other functions.
Thus, Vitreoretinal and Cataract surgical consoles usually have a large set of functionality, such as vitreous cutting, vacuum, etc. and commensurately are amenable to a large degree of customization. In other words, each of the parameters of such a surgical console may be individually adjusted to achieve desired settings. While at first blush this myriad number of configuration permutations might seem to be advantageous this ability may, however, in many cases cause a whole host of problems. For example, doctors may have to adjust each of multiple parameters individually during the course of performing a surgery, consuming valuable time. Furthermore, the adjustment of these parameters may need to be coordinated (e.g. the setting of one parameter depends at least in part on the settings of one or more other parameters) for best performance or to avoid possible injury or complications. This requirement may mean that settings corresponding to multiple parameters may need to be verified, calculated or adjusted even if a doctor is concerned only with a single parameter. Not only do these adjustments consume more time, but in addition, they may increase the chances of mistakes being made in the configuration of the surgical console, which, in some instances, may lead to injury of a patient or a doctor performing a surgical procedure. Additionally, feedback regarding these parameters, or other parameters associated with the operation of the surgical console, surgical procedure, patient, etc. may need to be provided to a user substantially in real time during operation of such a surgical console.
Therefore there is a need for interfaces for use with a surgical console.